The country is in an economic emergency. Unemployment --
especially long-term unemployment -- is at extremely high levels
and the recovery is faltering. Conservatives are obstructing efforts
to solve this because they believe it helps them in the November
election. To this end, conservatives are throwing out every possible
argument against helping the economy to see if any of them stick, and to
provide cover for opposing taking any action that might help matters.

The latest nonsense they are spreading is that helping the
unemployed keeps them from finding jobs. Good Lord! This is
basically the old "if you feed them they just breed" storyline. They
say "it makes them dependent" as if hard-working people laid off because
of Wall Street's scams are squirrels. Or, to hear the
nasty way conservatives talk about these human beings, they are like
rats. "Hobos," one Congressman called the unemployed! And the DC elite
listen, chuckle and repeat.

But while they say unemployment assistance keeps these lazy parasites
from finding jobs, they also obstruct bills that create
jobs by maintaining and modernizing our infrastructure.
This tells you it's just something they say, to cover for what
they do. And what they do is obstruct any effort to fix the
problem because they believe they will benefit if it is not fixed.

For example, the big DC drumbeat right now is against "spending."
They claim that government spending caused the crisis, ignoring
and passing the buck on everything that actually caused it, especially
their deregulation and their lack of oversight. They blame government
for everything, so why should this be different.

Along these lines they claim that the stimulus didn't work,
or even that spending made the problem worse, because there are
still people out of work. But look at the following chart. The
right side of the chart shows the effect of the stimulus. (Source,
Jed Lewison and Karina Newton)

A conservative, anti-government myth that is everywhere now is that "Government
forced banks to give loans to people who couldn't pay them back, and
this caused the financial collapse" -- and its variant that it
was about forcing banks to "help minorities."

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This is an example of the tactic of repeating a lie over and
over until enough people believe it. To deflect people from
understanding what really caused the crisis and from seeing that they
are obstructing the effort to reform the financial system they made this
one up.

Unfortunately this has become what bloggers call a "zombie
lie" -- no matter how many times you prove it is just a lie, it
comes back from the dead.

The Zombie Lie Problem

The "zombie lie" problem shows that it is a mistake to think that
just arguing facts is a way to shoot this stuff down. Spending your time
arguing facts with people who are trying to mislead misses the point.
The lie is not about the facts, it is cover for the obstruction. When
you try to argue a fact they will make up something else to throw you
off track. Facts are not what this is about, feeding a narrative of no
action is what this is about, because they understand that a bad
economy helps them in the Fall.

Listening to this stuff at all, and trying to argue facts
just contributes to the lack of action. There comes a point
when you have to stop llstening and getting bogged down by intentional
distractions and get something done for the economy and the public.

It Is Time to Stop Listening to This Stuff and ACT

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Enough with these stupid, heartless, dehumanizing right wing
"if you feed them they breed" arguments that are preventing action.
People are out of work and the recovery is faltering. It is time to
push aside the naysayers, and get something done. The government simply
has to step in and act. First, do the minimal, obvious things:

1) Pass the unemployment extension, because people
can't find jobs.

2) Continue COBRA subsidies, because so many of the
long-term unemployed are older people who cannot get or afford insurance
any other way. This is simple humanity, people! And, by the way,
COBRA itself is running out for many people, never mind subsidies.

Dave Johnson is Founder and principal author at Seeing the Forest.
Dave is a frequent public speaker and talk-radio guest and a leading participant in the progressive blogging community. He does a regular weekly segment on the popular Fairness (more...)